Bilingualism in Canada
Quebec, New Brunswick, Ontario – how common is French in these provinces?
As the Encyclopedia Canadienne argued back in 2021, before the French Language Respect Act (aka Bill 96) was passed, tensions between English-speaking and French-speaking Canadians had reached the level of the 1830s, when the British military suppressed the Francophone rebellions in Quebec. Quebec then wanted to form a separate republic.
Now separatist sentiment is not as strong in Quebec, but still, just recently the province was trying to secede from Canada, and three-quarters of Francophones approved of Bill 96 in 2021.
In 2016, 71.2% of Quebecers identified French as their native language and 85.4% identified French as their preferred language among the official languages. That's 6,890,305 people. 95% of Quebecers said they could speak French fluently.
The provincial government still believes that the French language is on the verge of extinction and makes policy decisions that discourage immigrants. Let's find out how strong nationalism is in the most multicultural country in the world.
A History of Bilingualism in Quebec
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